Everywhere I turn these days I find an article about "mission" in church periodicals. It's almost as if God is bringing about a transformation in our attitudes as well as our practice of "mission."

In my life as an ordained person, I have had two unusually significant encounters with persons who had been in what we used to call "the mission field" for a long time. Both experiences occurred while I was attending the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C. I offer them for thought in the midst of our current discussion.

The first experience was with the Rt. Rev. Ronald O. Hall, Bishop of Hong Kong. It occurred shortly after China had "gone communist." Bishop Hall's gentle manner belied the strength of conviction and the beauty of his inner spirit. (Readers may remember him as the bishop who ordained the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion, in 1944.)

I listened carefully to his description of his many trips to China and his work in Hong Kong. At that time I had been out of seminary only a few years. I was intensely interested in the mission of the church and in the spread of the gospel. At the end of the bishop's remarks, I asked, "Now that China is effectively closed to the West and to the church's work, how do you think we can bring the gospel to the Chinese people?" The bishop smiled and said, "Young man, that's the wrong question!" I responded, cautiously, "What is the right question?" His answer is one that is still exciting for me, even as I tell it more than 30 years later.

Bishop Hall described Chinese ideographic writing as picture writing. He pointed to one picture which meant a great deal to him - the stick figure of a person with a line alongside it. He described its meaning in Chinese language and thought: "No person is a person except in relationship to another." Then he went on to say that the figure appeared in Chinese ideographs many hundreds of years before Jesus Christ was born. Yet that figure contained within it God's incomplete revelation to the Chinese people of the truth God revealed to the Western world in the birth and death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, said Bishop Hall, the question we need to ask is something like this: "How can we help the Chinese people recognize God's revelation that exists right in their midst?"

The second experience occurred with a priest from India named Paul Devanandan. He was helping us understand the complex world of Hinduism. Among other things, during his lecture, he said, "For the Hindu, there is no absolute." Aha. I saw another opportunity to be active in Christian mission. So I said, when the lecture ended, "The Hindu believes that there is no absolute. Is that not an absolute statement in itself?" Dr. Devanandan's reply was kind, but firm and filled with a spirituality that he had been practicing in mission in India for many years. He said, "Theologically you are absolutely right. But the minute you say that to a Hindu, you will lose contact with him. He does not share the same frame of reference with you. What we are trying to do in India is stay in dialogue with the Hindu - Christian to Hindu and vice versa. So we will not use that language."

These experiences enriched my understanding of both the meaning and the strategy of "mission," and they still do. They reminded me of the necessity to know and understand other cultures and languages, especially since God's activity in history in those other cultures and languages provides us with opportunities to enrich the work God would have us do now, in our time. They remind me, also, of the necessity to establish and continue in dialogue with persons who seem to differ greatly from us.

Keith Ward, former professor at King's College, London, and now a professor at Oxford University, wrote, in Images of Eternity, one of his most seminal books, "the great traditions are not just different and incompatible; they exhibit deep convergence of thought and practice and many overlapping strands of particular similarity."

It is my hope the discussion going on now will help us see the profound opportunities that exist for us as we not only understand, but practice in greater depth than any previous generation has been able to do, the theology of "mission." o

The Rt. Rev. Walter C. Righter is the retired Bishop of Iowa. He resides in Alstead, N.H.